


Five Times Someone Did the Assassins a Favor, and One Time They Did Him One In Return

by tanarill



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Aging, Apple of Eden, Army, Assassins, Brothers, Christianity, Cults, Curiosity, Destruction, Fights, Gardens & Gardening, Gen, Homelessness, Honor, Leadership, Letters, Magical Artifacts, Mind Control, Murder, Napping, Post-Assassin's Creed, Religious Cults, Shadows - Freeform, Sparring, Suspicions, Swordfighting, Teaching, Templars, Timey-Wimey, Weird Shit and Shenanigans, Widsom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 11:21:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17548739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanarill/pseuds/tanarill
Summary: His name was not Rostam, and he'd thought his world-saving days were behind him.





	Five Times Someone Did the Assassins a Favor, and One Time They Did Him One In Return

One:

He joined the army.

It wasn't because he wanted to fight. He alone had as much experience fighting as the entire rest of his unit put together, and he knew that there was no glory in the gory work of the battlefield. Nor had he any need to prove himself, for he carried his honor with him and anyway Allah knew all the secrets of his heart. But the Christians had murdered three thousand Muslims in Acre, many of them women and children. It could not stand. So he joined the army.

He did try to keep a low profile, but it was, as always, impossible: he couldn't _not_ use every skill he'd ever learned to save the lives of his brothers-in-arms. This inevitably resulted in him coming to the attention of his superiors, and then his superiors' superiors, and then, well. He was the one who got given the weird tasks, the ones that anyone who was entirely human couldn't hope to survive. He survived them, of course. Every time.

"The Christians are sniffing around under the temple mount," said Salah al-Din, sultan of Egypt and Syria, and supreme commander of the armies. "There is something there. Find it before they do."

"And bring it back here?" he asked.

Salah al-Din snorted. "Rostam, I'm not as stupid as you seem to think I am. I know you are not as young as you appear to be, and I know that I don't command you because you bear me any loyalty. Do with it what you like. Just make sure those damned Christian Templars _don't_ get it."

"Understood," he said.

He failed in that, though, because it wasn't just the Templars. A bunch of white-hooded _asasiyyun_ showed up too, and he had to give up the chase to keep the youngest one of them - too young, even though he was older than the man who called himself Rostam had been when he'd first met the something no human could survive - from dying of his gut wound.

"Why are you doing this?" the young man asked, during one of the fever-soaked days when he wasn't quite sure.

"Even Nizari believe in Allah," he said. "What was it the Templars were after?"

If he was surprised to hear his sect named properly, he didn't show it. Instead just shook his head, mutely. When he'd recovered, he left - by vanishing one day while the man who called himself Rostam was out buying vegetables, so he couldn't even follow him home.

Well. Damn.

Two:

It was an eventful year. The _asasiyyun_ killed off the leadership on the Templar side, one after another, before finally taking the fight to Robert de Sablé himself. The string of deaths amongst the high command of the Crusaders sapped their morale as well as their military ability. By September of that year, the truth that the Crusaders could not hope to retake Jerusalem was apparent to all.

He went back to the army.

"Rostam. I had not expected to see you again. Most people who fail me know better than to return."

"You could try to kill me, if it would make you feel better," said the man whose name was not Rostam.

"Because I have so many men, that I might waste the lives of even the least of them? I continue not to be a fool."

The man who was not Rostam smiled.

Salah al-Din made a frustrated noise. "Why did you come back?"

"I'm curious. Whatever it was, the Nizari hold it now. What do you know about them?"

"Aside from the fact that they have twice tried to kill me, you mean?"

"Aside from that, yes. Their recent activities have been . . . very good for you."

"I have with them a truce, nothing more."

"Mm. I'm going to their fortress - Masyaf, I believe it is called? So if you have any letters for the old man on the mountain, I'll take them."

"You'll read them along the way."

"Of course. But I will take them."

So he got to present himself at the gate of the fortress and truthfully tell the men inside that he was carrying a letter from Salah al-Din. There was a lot of discussion about that, apparently, because he got to cool his heels there for . . . a long time.

It was a pleasant wait, though, so he didn't mind. There was a garden, with trees for shade, and after a while one of the white-robed _asasiyyun_ came out and offered him fresh fruit juice to drink, and if he was hungry some bread. He took both, and when he was done laid back in the shade to take a nap.

"You!" The call was not - quite - accusatory, but it still woke him. "You saved my life!"

"Um," he said, sitting up and holding out his hands. "Guilty as charged?"

"What are you doing _here_?" The asasi stopped in front of him, glaring. Behind him, to other silent, white-robed figures stood, cowls up so their faces was in shadow. One of them was missing his left arm below the elbow.

"I was curious," he said, watching them watch him.

"So you thought you'd just show up at the front gate?"

"Would coming in secret have helped?"

That, finally, earned him a slight smile. "True. Come, meet my brothers. Malik, Altaïr, this is not Rostam."

"An odd form of introduction," said the hooded man who was missing his arm. "Telling us who you are _not_ , instead of who you _are_."

"I _am_ no one," said the man who was not Rostam, "and I prefer to speak no lies. I buried my name with my family. So: if you need something to call me, you can call me Rostam."

"Ah," said the one-armed man. "And what business does 'no one' have in our fortress?"

He tilted his head, looking at the three asasiyyun. Three visible, anyway. Many more waiting to shoot from the fortress if he made a wrong step. "The business of destroying things . . . that ought to be left to eternity, let's say."

The young one, whose life he'd saved, took a half step forward, and the long golden afternoon sun glinted - he must've pulled a dagger. "How did you - "

The other one, the one who had not yet spoken, put an arm out to stop him. "Peace, Kadar. 'Rostam.' I believe you and I have much speech to share."

Three:

"How did you know about it at all," said Altaïr, with no preamble.

He thought about it, then decided that if Altaïr were not insane already, a little more truth couldn't hurt. So he attacked.

It did not take very long. Altaïr was not a poor fighter by any means, but he was young, inexperienced. Of course, in comparison to the man who was not Rostam, everyone was young and inexperienced. He dodged, ducked under, cut up and through his stomach to get at his heart. From there it wasn't hard to direct the both of them into a controlled fall.

"Why?" demanded Altaïr, an impressive feat; he knew from experience how painful fatal gut wounds were.

"Observe," he said, and reached -

It wasn't really a _direction_ , not in the usual sense. Maps had north and south, while time had past and future. Maps had east and west, and time had . . . other whens. Time had waves and currents, shallow reefs supporting entire ecosystems and terrifying things living in its depths. These days, he slipped in and out like a sleek silver fish, pulling himself and Altaïr through to a different when, one in which he hadn't attacked and the _asasi_ was not bleeding out on the floor.

Altaïr gasped in shock, or perhaps the sudden cessation of pain.

"So I know," said the man who was not Rostam. "There is something here that needs to be destroyed - "

"What just happened?" asked Altaïr.

" - but no one human can destroy it. Fortunately, I am here. Are you going to show me what it is?"

Four:

It was called an Apple of Eden, and it wished to rule him. He felt it scrabbling against his mind, desperately. Uselessly.

"Interesting," he said, ignoring the attempts. "What does it do?"

"Drives men mad," said Altaïr. "With power, or lust for it."

"Yes, yes, I can see _that_ ," said the man who was not Rostam. "But _why_?"

"To make slaves, I believe," said Altaïr, and, "Well? Can you destroy it?"

He shrugged. "Let's find out."

It was harder than he had expected. Or rather, it had been made to survive amounts of time that a normal human mind couldn't hope to comprehend. His was not, so he just shrugged it off and kept piling on the years, hundreds and then thousands and then tens of thousands of them. They pressed together like pages in a book, compressing down to layers only as thick as shadows. Finally, he felt something in it give out. The golden glow faded, although against the golden glow of time it was hard to see until he stopped concentrating and allowed the current to catch it again properly.

"Here," he said, holding up the corpse. The sphere was still much lighter than it should have been, but it was dead. Safe.

"You have my thanks," said Altaïr. Then, almost hesitantly, "I have never seen anyone fight like that. Would you be interested in a student?"

Five:

He'd never met anyone not himself who could run and jump and climb like he could. In fact, he realized, he still hadn't: the _asasiyyun_ were doing it _without the benefit of time_.

"Very well, then," he said, more to himself than any of them, "lessons for lessons."

He didn't have to cheat to beat them in the sparring ring, but nine times out of ten he did if he wanted to beat them up the sheer cliff faces around Masyaf. It was a fair enough trade, and Altaïr and Malik and even the irascible Abbas seemed to agree. He'd been a soldier, more than once, and he found the camaraderie pleasant even if he wasn't quite allowed in. Not unless he joined them.

He didn't even really object to it. He was not Nizari, but under Altaïr that seemed to matter less than believing that all people had the right to choose to live in accordance with Allah or in defiance. He certainly believed the other parts of the Creed, and he knew more than others exactly how little was true, how thin the walls of reality were, what people could do when they learned what they could do.

But. He was going to have to leave eventually, and it would hurt more if he had to leave his home.

One:

"What really did happen?" asked Altaïr. "That time you didn't kill me?"

The man who was not Rostam looked across at his friend. Altaïr was grey now, but he wore his years with grace. He was wiser now too, with lines of laughter and love and loss etched across him. He was not less curious. He'd stopped asking this kind of question decades ago, though, if only because he never got answers.

"Yes, I know," said Altaïr. "Humor an old man."

"Did you disperse the Order _just_ so that I could join it?"

"I meant everything I said, about the target it made us," said Altaïr. "It's better if we work in the shadows. I know you will . . . destroy those things. Where you find them. When you find them."

He knew because he'd done it twice now, and, yes, he was actively hunting the others. However many of them there were. And Altaïr, whose companion he had been for six decades now, knew that he would not stop until every single one of them was dead.

"Please," added Altaïr: Altaïr, who was clever enough to know the exact question to ask, the one that would answer all the others. They were locked in a vault that no human alive could leave. The man who wasn't Rostam would, of course, once his friend died, and Altaïr had to know that, but . . .

He thought about it, and then shrugged. "Most people think time is like a river that flows swift and sure in one direction. But I have seen the face of time, and I can tell you: they are wrong. Time is an ocean in a storm."

**Author's Note:**

> I did not tag for the surprise, but as I don't _think_ I'm hiding anything triggery, it is in good fun. Shout at me if you think I should spoil it in the tags after all, though.
> 
> So this happened because I read that AC was originally developed as a sequel to PoP:SoT, which, _hell yeah_. The fuck was Ubisoft thinking, getting rid of the good writers after PoP:SoT? Although my version of him has been through some shit, most of it related to being accidentally immortal.
> 
> My cold is almost gone this week, huzzah! \o/


End file.
